Paul G. Allen is a co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (together with Bill Gates). He regularly appears on lists of the richest people in the world.

Allen was born January 21, 1953, in Seattle, Washington. At Lakeside School outside Seattle, Paul Allen (14 years old) and friend Bill Gates (12 years old) became early computer enthusiasts. Allen went on to attend Washington State University, though he dropped out after two years to pursue his and Gates' dream of writing software commercially for the new "personal computers"

They founded Microsoft (initially "Micro Soft") in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975, and began selling a BASIC interpreter. Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. Microsoft won a contract to supply it to for use as the the operating system of IBM's new PC. This became a foundation of Microsoft's remarkable growth.

Allen was forced to resign from Microsoft after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy.

Today he is the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, an NBA basketball team, and the Seattle Seahawks, of the National Football League. He is also one of the principal financiers behind the SETI project, having stepping in to rescue the project when NASA stopped funding it in the 1990s.

Allen runs a venture capital firm, Vulcan Ventures, and has created the Experience Music Project, a museum of music history, in Seattle, Washington.

He (through Vulcan Ventures) owns TechTV and (through Rose City Radio Corporation) some Portland radio stations. When he heard Seattle's Cinerama movie theater was about to shut down, he bought, restored, and updated it into a showplace for movies of all formats.

In December 2003 he announced that he was the sponsor behind the SpaceShipOne private rocket plane venture from Scaled Composites, as part of the X-Prize competition.